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If you don’t recognize the name, you may recognize his nom de porn: Max Hardcore. For years, Hardcore was considered one of, if not the, most extreme adult movie directors in the business. Starring Hardcore in a cowboy hat and a shit-eating grin, his formulaic movies focused on the systematic degradation of his female costar of the moment who was not infrequently dressed up to resemble a child: wearing pigtails, discovered on a playground, sucking on a lollipop. The sex scenes took place on what would become an iconic yellow sofa, where speculums were introduced, Hardcore’s verbal onslaughts commenced, and the young women were turned into wild-eyed, dazed zombies by the finale.

Years ago, I encountered Hardcore at a loft party in downtown Los Angeles, but for the most part, over the years I wrote about the adult movie industry, I stayed away from him. In an over-the-top, surreal world, Hardcore seemed almost too much, unable to discern between his on-camera persona and whatever real person he actually was.

Of course, even in the wild, wild world of porn, if you play with fire enough times, you’re bound to get burned, and in 2008, in Tampa, Florida, Little was found guilty of distributing obscene material over the internet and through the US mail and sentenced to 46 months in prison. At the time, most journalists and bloggers saw Little as a victim — a man whose freedom of pornographic expression had been labeled criminal by the US government. In response, I wrote a post about the very hardcore realities of a Hardcore movie. [Warning: This post contains graphic language.]

In January of 2009, Hardcore surrendered to US marshals. Turning to the reporters who were following this spectacle, he pronounced:

“I’m disappointed that they found me guilty down there. But I respect it. I’m here to turn myself in and as a lover of freedom, I’m not too happy about that, but that’s the way it is and, well, I’ll see you guys later.”

Eventually, he ended up at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Anthony, Texas. Occasionally, I thought about writing him a letter asking if he’d let me interview him if I made the trip to Anthony, but I never did. I wondered if it was wrong that a man was imprisoned for making adult movies featuring consenting adults, or if Little was somebody who pushed the envelope one too many times and had to deal with the consequences.

Last year, I received an email from a journalist who was working on a story about Little. He was interested in interviewing me for the story because he had gone to see Little in prison. Apparently, Little had gone on a rant about a journalist who had written something about him, something that had enraged him. As it turned out, that story was mine, the aforementioned post on my blog, which, I assumed, he had read before he had gone to prison. Somehow, I had come to symbolize for Little all that he hated: the person who would not give him a pass to let him do whatever he wanted, no matter the cost.

Then, yesterday, I got the tweet that Little had been released. For months, I’d heard rumors he was out already. I called the Bureau of Prison’s Public Information Office, where a man confirmed, yes, Little had been released from La Tuna in January to a halfway house in Long Beach, California. As of July 19, he was a free man. I asked the man if Little had been a good prisoner, but the man was unable to say. For the next 36 months, Little will be under court-ordered supervision, although the man would not say what the details of Little’s parole are.

Once upon a time, pornographers were king. Today, the business is dying. As for obscenity, its definition remains as elusive as the day in 1964 when Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously opined: “I know it when I see it.”

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Porn is an emotive issue. For some people, even a screen kiss is taboo and punishable. Max Hardcore was at the other end of the scale, acting out the most extreme pornography. I do not like his material, but if we could send people to prison for not liking something they do, there would be no one left to jail. As far as I know, all his material was consensual. If it was not, then he deserved jail.

The charge of distributing obscene material also seem rich if we compare it with the distribution of other obscene material. Guns, tobacco and alcohol are all traded nationally, and kill (without exaggeration), hundreds of thousands of people each year, and will claim many people who are currently under age.

I’ve met Max before and he’s nothing like his on-screen persona. Oddly, he’s humble and a genuinely nice person. He happens to be into some odd stuff and plays a character, pretty well, I might add. It’s a shame he went to prison for making movies. Whatever your personal feelings about him are, obscenity law is a joke and needs to be done away with.

Being in a half-way house usually means they’re allowed out during the day to go to work. Which would be rather interesting in this case.

While I find the couple of clips of his I’ve viewed pretty disturbing, so are the Saw movies. Do we really need to judge what is obscene? If it doesn’t involve actual children, its ridiculous to censor it.

The most disturbing aspect of this case to me is that they seized all of his web site domains. Its on par with the ridiculous practice of seizing property if *any* of it was paid for with illegal proceeds, and in this case he had no way of knowing those proceeds were even illegal at the time.

Yes, all the great writers stick to short sentences containing only one idea, just like your 8th grade English teacher told you. Why, if only Shakespeare had followed that formula they might still be reading him today.